Canadian engineer Maher Arar, seen in this undated file photo, was detained in New York, then deported and tortured in his native Syria, after the RCMP mislabelled him as an "islamic extremist."

Photograph by: PAT McGRATH
, OTTAWA CITIZEN

Is he a “terrorist” or an “extremist”? A “supporter” or “sympathizer”?

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has created a set of standard definitions for commonly used terms to guide staff through the super-delicate task of labelling the individuals they’re watching.

According to a confidential memo obtained under access-to-information laws, the spy agency says it was compelled to create a “standard lexicon of CSIS terminology” following two inquiries into the detention and torture of Arab-Canadian men overseas in the aftermath of 9/11. Both inquiries concluded that Canadian officials had failed to accurately describe the men in intelligence reports.

“The objective of the lexicon is to increase clarity of communications internally, as well as with foreign and domestic partners,” says the October 2011 memo, which was delivered to the public safety minister, RCMP commissioner and other senior officials.

The one-page list of definitions describes a “terrorist” as someone who “has or will engage in, assist, commit or conduct a politically, religiously or ideologically motivated act of serious violence against persons or property.”

An “extremist,” on the other hand, is someone who “holds an extreme belief or interpretation of an idea, ideology, cause or issue, who may incite others to hold similar views and/or advocates extreme measures, including the use of violence, to draw attention to or advance a desired goal.”

Meanwhile, a “supporter” is an individual who “supports a particular organization, cause, issue, idea or ideology and who purposefully diverts or redirects attention and or resources (ie. time, funds, propaganda, etc.) towards this organization or cause.”

Such a person differs from a “sympathizer,” who “may be inclined to favour a particular organization, cause, issue, idea or ideology, but who will not purposefully divert or redirect attention and or resources (ie. time, funds, propaganda, etc.) towards supporting this organization or cause.”

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former CSIS intelligence officer, said in an interview Friday that the agency did a good job of capturing the subtle differences between the various terms.

Creating such a list is critical to “prevent abuses of language and abuses of interpretation,” especially if intelligence is being shared with outside agencies, he said.

“CSIS had to be more clear in the information they were sharing,” he said. “The words and definitions that they tag to a person will carry consequences for that person.”

Juneau-Katsuya said the agency might have benefited from adding other terms to the list, such as “radical,” “person of interest,” “suspect” and “target.”

Wesley Wark, a national security expert at the University of Toronto, said the agency’s definitions of “extremist” and “sympathizer” lack precision and that CSIS could have taken more care to distinguish between individuals who are expressing thought or speech protected by the Charter, and those who are engaging in criminal behaviour or pose a national security threat.

As they’re written now, these definitions “could be seen as giving operational legitimacy to all of these kinds of targets,” he said.

In 2008, an inquiry led by former Supreme Court of Canada justice Frank Iacobucci concluded that Canadian police and intelligence officials had contributed indirectly to the detention and torture of three Canadian men — Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin — in Syria after 9/11 because they had failed to accurately label them in shared intelligence reports.

“In my opinion, CSIS’s approach to labelling, as explained to me, is not adequate,” Iacobucci wrote in his report. “It appears to me to be desirable that the service have a clear policy concerning the manner in which people are described in communications with foreign agencies. This policy should extend not only to the use of appropriate qualifiers . . . but also the use of certain labels.”

In 2006, an inquiry by Justice Dennis O’Connor came to similar conclusions in the case of Maher Arar. The Canadian engineer was detained while passing through a New York airport on Sept. 26, 2002.

He was later deported to his native Syria and imprisoned for almost a year.

During that time he was interrogated and tortured.

O’Connor found that RCMP officials had mislabelled him as an “Islamic extremist” with suspected ties to al-Qaida. There was “no basis” for such an assertion, O’Connor said.

“Inaccurate information or mislabelling, even by degree, either alone or taken together with other information, can result in a seriously distorted picture,” he wrote.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to Arar in 2007 and awarded him $10.5 million in compensation.

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